NSpower is looking for another rate hike, this one 12-14%. they've been applying for and getting rate hikes on a regular basis, and i'm pretty sure nova scotia now has among the highest rates in the country (something that could be looked into). the usual process is they ask for an astronomical hike like this one, and then the URB grants them about half, which looks like a compromise, but is probably the maximum nsp knew it could hope for. this little dance between the corporation and the regulator - so much less offensive than NSPower asking for and the URB rubber stamping a 7% increase which is what is really happening - is the standard method of raising rates and will probably be repeated. as usual it will be the poor and small businesses that are hit especially hard.

a couple of issues/themes someone writing about this might want to look at:

the privatization of NS power: looking at how this deal was implemented and by whom and who benefitted and who lost from it, and how the now-chair of the URB was involved.

the subversion of democracy often involved in the privatization of public utilities: the general push by corporate elites and neoliberal governments to sell-off of public utilities all over the world but especially in the third world where it is forced on countries through IMF coercion. the public is usually opposed for the obvious reason that they lose control of what is a necessary service, and because the expected and usual consequences of privatizations are increased rates, decreased service. hence the extortion in the third world or the use of naomi klein's "shock doctrine" and the attempt to leave the public out of the process in the first world, as happened in NS. though not in NB where a public mobilization recently blocked the sell-off of NB power.

anyway, just a few suggestions. there are many ways someone could come at this, and many parallel examples but generally i think its a story that has received far too little attention, given the great and detrimental impact of the privatization of electricity on nova scotians, the danger of the privatization of water services, and the continued rate hikes which are demanded by a massively profitable corporation from a relatively low-income population that has nowhere else to get their electricity.